I’ve been losing weight for a while now, as I’ve posted about a couple of times. Today was another landmark. For the last few years, I’ve been wearing the same size/style of jeans – Old Navy Loose 36×30. I typically wore these pretty low, beneath my belly. I’ve noticed over the last while that I could pull my jeans up higher and that I needed to cinch my belt tighter and tighter. I was also told that my butt was disappearing in the jeans and that the style was not flattering. That brings us to today.

We headed over to Old Navy in Roseville and I tried on a couple of different styles of jeans. The first style I grabbed was a boot cut, followed by a straight fit, both in a 34″ waist. As a backup, I grabbed the same style as always, but one size down, as with the others. First I tried on the straight fit, which fit pretty well. Next up was the boot cut, which fit even better. I emerged from the fitting room and asked my wife how they looked. She approved and so I was sold. The fact that they were on sale for $19 didn’t hurt either.

So there we have it, a new pair of jeans in a smaller size and a much more flattering style. This is the first of many indications that I’m shrinking around the middle. I’ll be sure to update with any other indicators, mostly because I enjoy bragging about it.

I’ve been updating my daily stats, menus and photos for a week on my tumblelog. I’ve been trying to keep the order the same – photo first, stats second. My main reason for doing it in this order is that I’m including the two most recent posts on this site in a sidebar widget. The main drawback to that is that I have to wait until I get dressed in order to publish my first update. If I get distracted, like I did yesterday, the photo update may not happen until quite late in the day. I was at work and the lighting was awful, so the photo turned out grainy and dark.

One of the motivations behind this is to be able to track what I’m eating and see what’s giving me the best results. I also want to see if there’s anything tripping me up. Hopefully it will inspire me to prepare more meals for myself on work days, since those days seem to cause the most issues. I’m also noticing that I need to stock up on beef and bacon.

I’ve decided I’m going to post daily status updates over on my tumblr site. These will include a daily weigh in, plus what I’ve eaten that day and a photo. I may at some point turn the photos into a time-lapse video, but I haven’t really gotten that far yet. Today was the first update and I’m going to try to keep updating for as long as I can. I’ll also be embedding these updates from tumblr on this site in a sidebar. That pretty much sums it up. Come back every day if you want to see what I’ve eaten and what I look like that day. I’m sure it will be thrilling.

Since I started third level education at 19, my chin hasn’t been completely uncovered for more than a few days at a time. The styles and amounts have varied. I used to sport a Van Dyke – fuzzy chin and upper lip connected together as one – but in more recent years the top lip has been exposed to the world and I now wear a goatee – fuzzy chin and a little bit beneath my lower lip. The Van Dyke returns from time to time, usually before I renew my driver’s license for some odd reason. I tend to get annoyed with it pretty quickly and revert to my regular style.

In recent times, I’ve read in a few places that the more manly style of facial hair is the solitary mustache. I can’t quite get with that. I “rocked the ’stache” for a ’70s disco party in December, but it was purely for comedic effect. I went with a handlebar style that reached my chin. The recommended style, from what I can tell, is the “cop ’stache” – full coverage on the upper lip and nothing else. This is a style my dad and uncles wore in the ’80s and it suited them just fine, but I think it looks absolutely ridiculous on my face.

To those who can pull it off, I say to go for it. I won’t be joining their ranks any time soon, partly because of the reason just mentioned and partly because I am not fond of the way my chin looks without a covering of hair. Perhaps that will change in time, but it’s unlikely for now.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I had finally had enough of my expanded waistline and decided that it was time to do something about it. I read about the slow carb diet and figured it was worth giving it a shot. I tried it for about 3 weeks and it worked quite well. My biggest problem was discipline and how to get something quick and easy for lunch. Pretty much everything that I don’t make myself contains bread or rice (and often comes with a side of a potato product). Mexican and Mexican style food (Chipotle, El Pollo Loco) is pretty easy to modify by replacing rice with beans and forgoing the tortillas. The biggest pitfall in this case is the chips, which I have a very hard time resisting. I lost a few pounds by doing this, but have decided to change tactics for a while. There’s a good chance that I’ll return to this in the future, but for now it was a successful experiment.